1. Technical Field
The present invention relates to a technology for displaying a character specified in accordance with an operation of a player in a game in which a screen obtained by perspectively transforming, onto a virtual screen, a virtual three-dimensional space in which a plurality of characters exist, from a viewpoint of virtual camera, is displayed.
2. Related Art
In a three-dimensional video game, an object existing in a virtual three-dimensional space is perspectively transformed onto a virtual screen by a virtual camera, and a two-dimensional image generated by the perspective transformation is displayed on a display device. In order to increase a game reality, a control of a position of a visual point, and a direction of a visual axis, of the virtual camera becomes important. Herein, in the three-dimensional video game, it has been known that, in the event that a change in a point of gaze (a reference point) is marked when controlling the visual point of the virtual camera, a player suffers from a phenomenon of so-called camera sickness due to a marked change in an image being displayed on the display device.
In order not to allow a change in the position of the visual point, and the direction of the visual axis, of the virtual camera to become marked, so as to prevent the camera sickness, a game apparatus is proposed which, a position of a player character being made a target position, is configured in such a way as to slowly move the position of the visual point of the virtual camera by arranging in such a way that the point of gaze of the virtual camera approaches the target position at a predetermined rate (refer to, for example, Unexamined Japanese Patent Publication No. 2004-329463 (paragraphs 0054 to 0083 or the like)).
However, the game apparatus of Japanese Patent Publication No. 2004-329463 applies to a case in which the virtual camera is controlled following basically one player character. As opposed to this, among the three-dimensional video games, there is one in which a plurality of player characters appear, and a character to be operated is switched as needed by the operation of the player. In this way, in the event that the player character to be operated by the player has been switched, it is necessary to control the virtual camera in accordance with a new player character to be operated, but the control of the virtual camera during this time becomes problematic.
In the event that the player character to be operated has been switched, it is conceivable that a condition, in which the virtual camera is controlled in accordance with the previous player character to be operated, is instantaneously switched to a condition in which the virtual camera is controlled in accordance with a new player character to be operated. However, in this case, it is difficult to ascertain a positional relationship between the new and old characters to be operated from a screen being displayed, and a phenomenon, which cannot occur in the realistic world, occurs in which an infinite quantity of cameras exists no matter how large a quantity of characters may become. A visual effect cannot be obtained, either, in which a displayed image changes continuously.
Meanwhile, in a case of arranging in such a way as to control the virtual camera for a predetermined length of time in such a way that the displayed image changes continuously, depending on a condition in which the virtual camera is controlled during this time, a problem occurs in that the player feels a distortion in the image displayed on the display device, and suffers from the camera sickness, or the positional relationship between the characters to be operated before and after the switching becomes difficult to understand. Also, in the event that the virtual camera is too finely controlled, there is also a problem in that the process becomes too complicated.